Freeman Dyson Quotes

135 Sourced Quotes

One factor that has remained constant through all the twists and turns of the history of physical science is the decisive importance of the mathematical imagination.

Freeman Dyson
The place of mathematics in the physical sciences is not something that can be defined once and for all. The interrelations of mathematics with science are as rich and various as the texture of science itself.

Freeman Dyson
When the great innovation appears, it will almost certainly be in muddled, incomplete and confusing form.... For any speculation which does not at first glance look crazy, there is no hope.

Freeman Dyson
If the tools are bad, nature's voice is muffled. If the tools are good, nature will give us a clear answer to a clear question.

Freeman Dyson
Looking back through the long past we picture the beginning of the world - a primeval chaos which time has fashioned into the universe that we know. Its vastness appalls the mind; space boundless though not infinite, according to the strange doctrine of science.

Freeman Dyson
A physicist builds theories with mathematical materials, because the mathematics enables him to imagine more than he can clearly think.

Freeman Dyson
On being asked what he meant by the beauty of a mathematical theory of physics, Dirac replied that if the questioner was a mathematician then he did not need to be told, but were he not a mathematician then nothing would be able to convince him of it.

Freeman Dyson
When will the third romantic age in the history of spaceflight begin? The third romantic age will see little model sailboats spreading their wings to the sun in space.

Freeman Dyson
The most serious uncertainty affecting the ultimate fate of the universe is the question whether the proton is absolutely stable against decay into lighter particles. If the proton is unstable, all matter is transitory and must dissolve into radiation.

Freeman Dyson
Lucky individuals in each generation find technology appropriate to their needs.

Freeman Dyson
The unanimity with which the galaxies are running away looks almost as though they had a pointed aversion to us. We wonder why we should be shunned as though our system were a plague spot in the universe.

Freeman Dyson
The difference between a text without problems and a text with problems is like the difference between learning to read a language and learning to speak it.

Freeman Dyson
Physics is littered with the corpses of dead unified field theories.

Freeman Dyson
Every orchid or rose or lizard or snake is the work of a dedicated and skilled breeder. There are thousands of people, amateurs and professionals, who devote their lives to this business. Now imagine what will happen when the tools of genetic engineering become accessible to these people.

Freeman Dyson
There is nothing so big nor so crazy that one out of a million technological societies may not feel itself driven to do, provided it is physically possible.

Freeman Dyson
Mathematical intuition is more often conservative than revolutionary, more often hampering than liberating.

Freeman Dyson
As a working hypothesis to explain the riddle of our existence, I propose that our universe is the most interesting of all possible universes, and our fate as human beings is to make it so.

Freeman Dyson
Not only is Space from the point of view of life and humanity empty, but Time is empty also. Life is like a little glow, scarcely kindled yet, in these void immensities.

Freeman Dyson
We have seen particle physics emerge as the playground of group theory.

Freeman Dyson
To give us room to explore the varieties of mind and body into which our genome can evolve, one planet is not enough.

Freeman Dyson
If we have still to leave the stellar universe a region of hidden mystery, yet it seems as though, in our exploration, we have been able to glimpse the outline of some vast combination which unites even the farthest stars into an organised system.

Freeman Dyson
I do not make any clear distinction between mind and God. God is what mind becomes when it is passed beyond the scale of our comprehension. God may be considered to be either a world-soul or a collection of world-souls. We are the chief inlets of God on this planet at the present stage of his development.

Freeman Dyson
We do not need to have an agreed set of goals before we do something ambitious!

Freeman Dyson
At Cornell, I was simply puzzled and mystified by [Richard] Feynman's stuff. I couldn't figure out how he was getting all those amazing answers which turned out to be right. It was just a great mystery. I didn't understand it and, as far as I could tell, nobody else did.

Freeman Dyson
The seeds from Ramanujan's garden have been blowing on the wind and have been sprouting all over the landscape.
[On the stimulating effects of Ramanujan's mathematical legacy.]

Freeman Dyson
Ethical progress is the only cure for the damage done by scientific progress.

Freeman Dyson
It used to be said, before the recent era of revolutionary discoveries, that science was organized common sense. In the modern era it would be more accurate to define science as organized unpredictability.

Freeman Dyson
Since the universe is on a one-way slide toward a state of final death in which energy is maximally degraded, how does it manage, like King Charles, to take such an unconsciously long time a-dying.

Freeman Dyson
The theory of the expanding universe is in some respects so preposterous that we naturally hesitate to commit ourselves to it. It contains elements apparently so incredible that I feel almost an indignation that anyone should believe in it - except myself.

Freeman Dyson
Heat is disordered energy. So with two words the nature of heat is explained.

Freeman Dyson